NEW KOCH

Can the Koch Brothers Stop Trump?

For Charles and David Koch (left and right, respectively), it has become hard to buy a presidential election.

“You’d think we could have more influence,” Charles Kochtold the F.T. last month over pulled-pork sandwiches at the staff commissary of Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas. The wealthy industrialist and conservative impresario was giving a rare interview in support of his new book, but his disillusionment with the state of the Republican presidential race (and politics in general) was apparent. In 2012, he and his younger brother, David Koch, raised approximately $400 million through their donor network with the primary goal of electing Mitt Romney—only to be outmaneuvered in the end by Barack Obama’s campaign. During the intervening years, the Kochs’ political operatives studied what had gone wrong in 2012 and redoubled their efforts to ensure that the same fate would not befall them again. By the start of the 2016 election cycle, the brothers and their allies had pledged to raise nearly $900 million to elect Republicans, particularly whomever ends up facing Hillary Clinton—or, perhaps, Bernie Sanders—in the general election.

But things don't seem to be working out as smoothly as planned. Like other members of the Republican elite, the Koch brothers misjudged Donald Trump. They never considered the real estate scion a serious contender, and his politics on taxes, trade, and foreign policy clashed thoroughly with theirs. (Charles Koch noted that Trump’s Muslim registry, for instance, would “destroy our free society.”) Even when Trump, who has known David for years, sought their support—going as far as hiring Corey Lewandowski, a veteran of their advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, as his campaign manager—the Kochs rebuffed him. Then Trump turned on them. When the Koch network left Trump off the invite list for an August donor summit attended by five of his G.O.P. rivals, he trolled his opponents on Twitter: “I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?”

Charles Koch’s candid lament at the office canteen drew predictable ridicule from critics on the left, who found it deliciously ironic coming from a billionaire marshaling hundreds of millions of dollars to sway the election. But the comment also revealed a different irony: the Kochs, after building a shadow party on the right, are now struggling to gain traction in a political landscape they have helped to bring into existence.

This election cycle was supposed to be the one in which the Koch network­ fulfilled its mission of installing a Republican in the White House. But that goal, and the millions behind it, are at risk. And before the Kochs begin to take on Hillary or Bernie, they are carefully considering whether to wage a war against Trump.

The Kochs had initially opted against engaging in the primaries, both because there was no consensus pick within their network or a single candidate who encapsulated their views. (The closest one, ideologically, was Rand Paul, who dropped out of the race on Wednesday.) But for months, the Koch network has considered diverting a portion of its massive war chest to a campaign targeting Trump, even at the risk of alienating a handful of their members who support the candidate. Koch officials say they will move forward with this plan based on how the early primaries shake out. (Ted Cruz’s caucus win on Monday must have come as a mild relief.)

But Trump’s second-place Iowa finish was more a blow to his ego, in some respect, than the viability of his campaign. If he prevails in New Hampshire, where he’s maintaining a huge lead in the polls, pressure is likely to mount within the Koch network to launch an offensive before a march to the nomination gains formidable momentum. When the Kochs and several hundred of their allies gathered last weekend for another summit, halting Trump was a major topic of discussion.

What form might this attack take? According to The Hill, the Kochs’ operatives have carefully assessed Trump’s vulnerabilities—and those of the other candidates—and determined that highlighting his track record of bankruptcies and predatory business deals harms his standing with likely voters. (The Democrats deployed a similar strategy, to great effect, against Romney’s “vulture capitalism.”) “As to whether we would mount something like that, everything is on the table,” one senior Koch official told me. “But there’s no real plan. In all of our meetings we’ve discussed it.”

One thing that has held the Koch network back so far, in addition to the Trump backers within their ranks, is the concern that taking on Trump would inevitably draw the thin-skinned tycoon’s legendary invective, which it almost certainly would. If the Kochs go after Trump, rest assured that he will take every opportunity to highlight how he’s being attacked by a cabal of billionaires seeking to control the outcome of the election. And this more or less explains their caution to this point. By taking on Trump, the Kochs risk lending credence to his claims of being an outsider who is battling against a corrupt political system rigged by the elites.

The bizarro-world nature of the 2016 race is confounding to Charles Koch, an iron-willed, M.I.T.-trained engineer who has devoted his life to the twin goals of expanding his family-owned conglomerate and disseminating the gospel of the free market. Koch, who rejects party labels and describes himself as a “classical liberal,” has been on a long—often frustrating—quest to change the political culture of the United States. Starting in the 70s, the Kochs had set out to demolish the two-party political system by backing the insurgent Libertarian Party. Eventually, they abandoned this quixotic effort while pursuing the more pragmatic strategy of working through the Republican Party structure in the hopes of eventually nudging it closer to their libertarian worldview.

And this seemed to be working. By methodically constructing a sprawling operation with all the trappings (and more) of a traditional political party—from fundraising to micro-targeting to candidate recruitment—the Kochs had eventually obtained political power by decentralizing it. Their ascendance came as a series of court decisions, including Citizens United v. F.E.C., stripped away restrictions that had prevented corporations and individuals from giving freely in support of political candidates and causes. The effect was to create a new, and to some frightening, brand of politics in which wealthy donors held more sway over the political process than at any time since the Gilded Age. The Kochs, with their organized network of fellow mega-donors, were emblematic of this shift away from party power. Who needed a political party when you and your friends could simply create your own?

In their own way, the Kochs inspired other donors to consider alternative outlets for their advocacy. No longer do wealthy contributors have to rely on crusty party institutions. They are free, together and separately, to pursue their own agendas with as much money as they can bear to part with. Hedge-fund mogul Paul Singer, a Koch network member who is backing Marco Rubio, is among those who have applied the Koch model to create a group of contributors to concentrate on his own set of pet issues, including supporting Republican candidates who back same-sex marriage. But you don’t even need a network to have an impact. Consider that the extraordinarily well-funded outside-spending campaign supporting Cruz is bankrolled almost entirely by a pair of fracking billionaires and two investment tycoons.

The real irony, of course, is that the rise of the maverick mega-donor class, which the Kochs helped pioneer, may inevitably dilute their clout. There is now an unprecedented flood of money, from competing interests and factions, coursing into the political system. By adopting the characteristics of a political party and remaining mostly neutral up to this point on the Republican race, the Kochs are losing some relevance—as is the Republican Party, whose dominance they successfully challenged.

Trump’s candidacy could force a reckoning within the Koch network, whose members are largely leaning towards Rubio and Cruz. If Trump becomes the nominee and he faces self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders in November, the senior Koch official explains, members of the donor network are likely to hold their noses and back Trump’s candidacy. But there’s another scenario that could prove far more controversial and possibly damaging for the network: a Trump-versus-Clinton matchup. There is absolutely no love between the Clintons and the Kochs, whose company experienced one of the most traumatic periods in its history as it fought off regulators during Bill Clinton’s presidency. But, so strong is the dislike for Trump within the Koch network, that a Clinton-Trump race is a tough call. “I could see the network not participating in the presidential election at all,” says the senior Koch official. Such a decision would likely cause some donors to part ways with the Kochs, particularly those who are committed to electing a Republican at any cost.

The uncertainties facing the Kochs and their allies—and their decision about whether to take on Trump before it’s too late—reflects a surprising, and perhaps heartening, reality within our political system. Even for America’s most powerful billionaires, buying an election is not as easy as it sounds.